quote:
The University of Colorado's elite cheerleading squad is about to shed unwanted pounds.

CU's coach, worried about injuries to male cheerleaders, has told women planning to attend next month's tryouts that they should weigh less than 120 pounds if they hope to make the competitive team.

The new weight guideline, for women shorter than 5-foot-7, replaces an informal 130-pound limit that Coach Travis Prior instituted last season - a rule that temporarily sidelined several female cheerleaders.

"This happens everywhere," said a veteran CU cheerleader, who insisted on anonymity for fear of reprisals. "With this new weight limit, girls are already talking about going on unhealthy diets.

"This is definitely sending the wrong message."

Health experts agree - but admit the situation is something of a Catch-22. They acknowledge the very real need to prevent injury, yet say the new weight restriction could lead to potentially deadly eating disorders.

"These girls will develop really restrictive eating habits to force their bodies into a size that's too small for them," said Holly Hoff, program director for Seattle-based Eating Disorders Awareness and Prevention. "You're sort of trading one set of problems for another."

The weight rule - which applies only to women - is raising questions about whether CU's cheerleading program is in compliance with Title IX, the landmark legislation barring gender discrimination in college athletics.

Prior, a former CU cheerleader, is unapologetic about the coed squad's new weight guideline, calling it "a preference, really; not a restriction." Women weighing more than 120 pounds may still try out for the noncompetitive all-women team, he said.

"There's really no discrimination toward girls who want to be a part of our program," Prior said.

Others aren't so sure.

"It looks to me like it's discriminatory," said Melissa Hart, a CU law professor specializing in bias cases. "It's setting standards for women, but not for men."

Sherri McKelvey, assistant director of the CU athletic department's compliance office, acknowledged that the weight recommendation could pose a Title IX question. But, she said, her office doesn't monitor cheerleading because it isn't an NCAA-sanctioned sport.

"We just don't pay a lot of attention to it," McKelvey said.

The idea of a weight restriction was first introduced last summer as a way to deal with injuries sustained by male cheerleaders who throw their female teammates into the air, an activity known as "stunting."

The 15 women on last season's competitive squad each weighed between 98 and 135 pounds and stood between 5 feet and 5 feet, 7 inches tall, according to the coach.

Nearly every season, Prior said, at least one male cheerleader undergoes surgery to repair muscle or tendon damage, usually in the shoulder. Last year, one team member missed five months of the season with a torn biceps.

Prior isn't alone in his concerns about cheerleading injuries. Just last week, in fact, injuries and liability concerns led the University of Nebraska to ban stunting by its teams.

A 1999 study published in The Physician and Sportsmedicine journal said cheerleading was responsible for 76 percent of deaths and serious spinal injuries among female college athletes between 1982 and 1997.

"These types of stunts are just not safe," Bill Byrne, Nebraska's athletic director, said in a statement announcing his school's ban on human pyramids, handsprings and other forms of stunting.

Prior implemented the 130-pound rule in August and required several women to sit out stunting exercises during team practices. "Then they lost the weight and were unbenched," the veteran cheerleader said.

This season, Prior has dropped the elite squad's recommended weight by 10 pounds, noting, on CU's Web site, that "persons of less than average size, particularly females, are more likely to demonstrate the flexibility which is necessary in the athletic aspects of cheerleading."

Women will be weighed during the April 5-7 tryouts, Prior said. And those who make the squad will be subjected to weekly or bimonthly weigh-ins.

"I'm stunned," said Jennifer Hagman, director of the eating disorders clinic at Children's Hospital in Denver. "Someone's going to have to work at not getting an eating disorder. This is dangerous."

Do ALL female cheerleaders get tossed in the air? Jeez, why not just have the ones who are naturally at that weight be the ones who get tossed around? That sounds more sensible and healthy for everyone. I perfectly comprehend that repeated stress to the men's or women's backs and arms can be caused by tossign around heavier people, but don't know enough about physiology to guess whether 10 lbs will make a difference for them or not.

10 lbs will make a lot of difference on a woman who's already at a low-medium weight, and who's expected to be athletic. What about potential injury to the female cheerleaders, due to pulling their weight down? When they starve, they lose muscle as well as fat, and don't get the nutrients necessary to help prevent muscle and bone injuries.

I love the consolation prize: "ya'll can be on the short-bus team if you're too fat to be elite."

quote:Originally posted by Lu I propose this:
fuck the weight requirement on the women and make a weight requirement for the male cheerleaders. All male cheerleaders must way over 300lbs and be able to bench 200lbs.

Ok, well having listened to many reports on the subject (being that it's all over the radio), I can honestly say, I don't care. The 120lbs weight is an ideal weight that the coaches want the "flyers" to be. This only applies to the ladies wanting to be tossed. Not all females even on the competitve team get tossed. Only the ones that do are supposed to meet the weight requirement. 120 lbs is only an ideal weight. A girl weighing 125 may still make the cut. I don't have a source to link as I heard this from the coach yesterday. Girls under 5'7 shouldn't have that big of a problem weighing 120 lbs. Eh, I don't care really.

quote:Originally posted by Lu I propose this:
fuck the weight requirement on the women and make a weight requirement for the male cheerleaders. All male cheerleaders must way over 300lbs and be able to bench 200lbs.

This pisses me off.

Thats the fucking dumbest thing you could of possibly said, If you can't bench more than your body weight you are just a sloppy fuck. I weigh 150 and can bench around 250 and I'm not huge by any means, Fat people are slobs.

Lol... there are physical requirements for every sport; cheerleading is no different. Boxers and wrestlers have to fit in certain weight classes, no one is complaining to change that system. Why not? Because it makes sense - you have to pair people up based on size. The only reason anyone cares is because someone out there though "this is going to make girls feel bad about themselves and reinforce negative body images." What the fuck is that? No one has the right to be on a cheerleading squad, you have to make the cut. If you're going to be psycho and starve yourself to make the cut, that's a personal choice. It's a crappy situation, but put the blame where it belongs, on the person making the choice, not the standard she was trying to reach. And another thing, who said 120 lbs was necessarily a negative body image? There are a lot of girls out there who weigh 120 lbs; there are a lot of girls who weigh 250 lbs, there are a lot of girls who weight 90 lbs. No of those are negative body images. The negative part comes when some girl tries to make herself into something she's not.

What it comes down to is this: if a girl wants to get thrown in the air, she has to be reasonably small. If you're medium-sized, or even just a little bit larger than reasonably small, it's a health risk to have guys trying to throw you around. Period. Sorry your genetics keep you from getting thrown around. Buy a trampoline.